A skipper with less sense than I asked me to help deliver an ancient powerboat from Trinidad to Uruguay.  For a start, it only had tankage for about 150 miles.  I, having less sense than he, agreed.  This is Part Two of the journey.

Amerigo looks about 20 but this morning I discovered he’s 36.  He asked me how old I am, but I side-stepped.  My daughter’s older than he.  In Uruguay, he’s a mechanic.  Cars, trucks and buses.  He’s also had a couple of spells working on the crew of race car teams in Europe and proudly showed me pictures of himself at tracks in Monaco, Germany and France.  Here, he’s somehow connected to the new owner of the boat we’re taking to Uruguay, under the command of bearded and broken nosed Captain Skip.

Skip’s not too impressed by Amerigo’s mechanical nouse but then again Skip had his own Saab shop in Florida, for twenty five years, and anyone who can keep their sanity with that experience has forgotten more about engines and electronics than any Formula One hotshot mechanic can remember.

Skip speaks no Spanish and Amerigo no English.  I have some Spanish but learned entirely by ear, in Antiochia, Colombia – and so rather pure and Castillian.  It’s tough to understand Amerigo, though not as tough as it is to make sense of the Mexican Spanish they speak in California.

We’ll get by.  Just as long as he doesn’t ask me how old I am again.

My immediate instinct is that these are two good men and that, whatever other excitements we may face, personality clashes will not be among them.  On the other hand, I may have to throw a temper tantrum about my bunk.  There’s a busted spring strategically designed to cause severe back trauma and early indications are that it’s directly connected to the boat’s emergency self-destruct button …

Happy Daze is an older 46’ cruiser.  Fiberglass as thick as a door jamb and the only vacuum bagging in sight would be in the Hoover.  If there were a Hoover.  The boat is not as clean as it might be but it took a pounding en route Miami-Trinidad.  Fell off a twenty-some foot wave at one point, and hit so hard that it broke its positive bus-bar.  That’s a lot of impact and it speaks highly of the vessel’s construction that the bus-bar was the limit of the damage.  It was, however, enough to send the original crew home in a funk.  Which is why I’m here, believing that the rest of the journey is downhill.  A two knot current pushing us down the coast of Brazil, 200 miles a day and home in three weeks.  Except that who knows anything at sea and a breakdown in some obscure Brazilian fishing port might throw a curve into the schedule.  On the other hand, with internet and FedEx, most items can be in most places in the world in just a few days.  That in itself takes some of the adventure out of any trip on this planet. 

Roll on the day when we’ll be able to roam the Galaxy in surplus Space Cruiser lifeboats, much as many of the early Earth cruisers explored the oceans in various unlikely sailing craft, including converted lifeboats.

There’s ying and yang everywhere if you don’t pull the trigger too fast.  For the morose official who did the stamping in Trinidad, there was a Cheerful Charlie who wished the Happy Daze well.  For the rapacious Customs Officer, there was a delightful marina clerk/manager.  For the miserable fuel boss, a smiling young lady operating the cash register.

So, now, 500 gallons of fuel later – 300 of it stashed in 50 gallon drums lashed into the cockpit, a neon-lit invitation to any drug intercepting force – we’re boogeying along the northern shore of Trinidad at 11 knots.  Yes.  Just 200 gallons in the integral tanks.  300 in drums.  Ten to twelve gallons an hour at 10-12 knots.  None of it makes sense but what do I know – I’m a sailor.

10-12 knots steady, and especially zero to 12 more or less instant, is a new experience for me (as in ‘I’m a sailor,’ above). I’m not sure, yet, that it’s enough to drag me out of the sail closet.  There’s a high price to pay for this speed and control: huge consumption, a lot of sturm, stink und drang; constant noise and vibration but we’re certainly eating up the miles and that’s the whole point.  My friends with more sophisticated vessels than this poor old beater which, by the look of  the wooden beams in the engine room, has suffered a major fire, do not suffer the sturm or stink – but diesel is diesel anywhere in the world and never free.

The next port of call is Guyana,

A straight shot from the north eastern tip of Trinidad.  30 some hours of passage in all, with 40 some hours of fuel aboard. We’ll transfer from the cockpit drums to the main tanks underway – but at about 5 in the evening Captain Skip decides that it would be better to anchor and make the first fuel transfer in daylight.

Good decision, halted for the night in a delightful bay, Grand Rivere.  No other boats in sight, just a couple of houses back from the beach and a small hotel, which we will not have time to visit even if we could persuade the dinghy through the surf.  

The moment the engines die, the island jungle smell wafts over Happy Daze, fecund and fragrant with tropical flowers – if regularly overwhelmed by the fatal pong of the skipper’s Marlboros.

Why anyone who takes this much pleasure from his life as Skip would want to end it in coughs and splutters is beyond me.   Maybe he’s worked on internal combustion engines too long.

As the anchor rattles down, an upturned industrial wheelbarrow floats by.  How can that be?  Then it morphs into the biggest turtle this side of the Pliocene.  It has a bright orange flash on the back of its head, some kind of an eco-tracker? 

Within moments, several more turtles pop their heads up, all more or less the same giant size.  Whatever brutal  collective unconscious they may share about the murderous tendencies of homo sapiens, they’re curious and peer at these particular humans from beady prehistoric eyes.

Insect song.  The music of the surf. Canned soup.  Sandwiches. We’re halfway to Paradise.  Ditch the canned soup and we’d probably be there …

TO BE CONTINUED ...